State to conduct random audit of polling sites

Published 5:20 pm, Wednesday, November 28, 2012

One Danbury polling location and two in New Milford were among the dozens randomly selected by state officials for an audit of election results.

As required by state law, about 10 percent of the polling locations in Connecticut are required to be audited during each election cycle to ensure the machine counts match the paper ballots, according to the Secretary of the State's office.

"Auditing election results isn't just a good idea, it's absolutely essential in order to guarantee the integrity of our elections," said Secretary of the State Denise Merrill.

She added the state has the "toughest" elections audit law in the country.

"We don't just take the machine's word for it," she said. "So we will have every ballot cast in a full 10 percent of the precincts using optical scanning machines hand counted and matched against the machine totals."